Anything Is Possible

Elizabeth Strout

Viking, £12.99

Review by Allan Hunter

PEACE, love and understanding arrive from the unlikeliest sources in Elizabeth Strout’s Anything Is Possible. A comforting act from a complete stranger or a sudden insight from a close neighbour can bring a life into clearer focus and make the world seem a less intimidating place. Compassion is the balm that reaches even the deepest wounds in this graceful, pin sharp portrait of small-town America.

Strout has a rare gift for making the delicate ebb and flow of everyday existence feel epic in scope. She can transport you to the dirt and gloom of a neglected family home, the stretched nerves of a Christmas outing or an awkward, walking-on-eggshells homecoming. Anything Is Possible is a worthy companion piece to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge and the more recent My Name Is Lucy Barton as it traces the guilty secrets, hidden scars and unexpected connections among individuals resolutely tied to the vast, sprawling cornfields and wide blue skies that surround Amgash, Illinois.

On the surface, Amgash is the kind of tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone else’s business – the affairs, the indiscretions, the joyless unions – and yet just by digging a little deeper it is possible to discover a whole different reality. The book is a quasi-sequel to My Name Is Lucy Barton and prior knowledge of that character and the cruel hardships of her childhood would certainly enhance the pleasure to be derived from this volume. Barton was born in Amgash. Her subsequent flight and reinvention as a feted literary figure based in New York attracts a spectrum of emotions from pride to bitter resentment. Almost all the characters in Anything Is Possible have connections to her.

Strout can conjure up a person's history in a short sentence or a pithy paragraph. Shelly Small, for instance, “had been raised to speak about herself as though she was the most interesting thing in the world” whilst the tragic Linda Peterson-Cornell “would have liked her own husband, whose intelligence has once impressed her so, to simply disappear.” The precision and focus of her writing leaves the impression of someone who hones and crafts sentences the way a sculptor moulds and shapes their clay.

Strout’s tapestry of bittersweet vignettes is reminiscent of Raymond Carver’s short stories although Strout seems more inclined to find the positive in the resilience of her characters. There is no sense of black and white in her world, just infinite shades of grey and the underlying, even-handed philosophy that the more you know someone, the less inclined you are to judge them. She is far from sentimental in her writing. There are plenty of small-minded individuals and spiteful acts to be found in these pages but there is also warmth and humour. Lucy Barton’s first visit to Amgash in 17 years leaves her sister Vicky and brother Pete to conclude that they didn’t turn out so bad after all. “Well, we’re not out there murdering people, if that’s what you mean," declares Vicky.

What lingers most is the possibility of change. Lucy Barton escapes her past and builds a new life. Mississippi Mary leaves her husband of more than 50 years to start afresh in Italy with a man almost 20 years her junior. Anguished Vietnam veteran Charlie Macauley finds ways to make his pain bearable and Lucy Barton’s brother Peter finds that an act of confession wins him a true friend. Strout is very much a believer that where there is life there is hope.

Almost a collection of short stories, Anything Is Possible manages to thread together disparate lives although inevitably there are people you are more inclined to spend time with than others. The sparky Dottie with her humble bed and breakfast establishment deserves her own book and Charlie Macauley is someone who has more to reveal but the closing story of Abel Blaine feels like one of the lesser tales in the collection.

Strout’s strength is her acute understanding of human nature and the notion that everyone has their reasons for the way they are and how they act. She has an affinity for lives of quiet desperation, an appreciation of the best and worst of humanity, the shame that never fades, and the resilience of a broken heart. Anything Is Possible is a wise, warm hug of a book. You don’t need to have read Strout’s previous work to appreciate it but when writing is this good, it is impossible to imagine that you wouldn’t want to.